Latin America must work on a logistics-based integration agenda to attract more investment and boost productivity

Investment is critical to develop the most competitive sectors of the economy and have them drive and consolidate sustainable growth. Latin America has a logistics potential to boost business competitiveness and create new jobs that improve the quality of life of the population and reduce poverty, said Luis Carranza, executive president of CAF—development bank of Latin America—during his participation in the International Economic Forum Quo Vadis Peru 2019.

“Latin America’s current infrastructure gap presents a great opportunity to attract private investment and take a qualitative leap, but we need to prioritize this investment by devising a regional integration agenda based on logistics axes with infrastructure and governance components. At CAF, we are promoting the Logistics Development Areas through systemic and simultaneous interventions—infrastructure, services, governance—in ports, metropolitan areas, border crossings, productive clusters, modal interconnection axes, among others,” Carranza explained.

During his speech, the executive president also underscored Latin America’s opportunities to develop value chains to empower productive sectors such as mining and agriculture. “We need to work on a productivity pact, emphasizing how we advance efficiency, infrastructure investment and political consensus to achieve the structural reforms required in each of the countries in the region in order to improve well-being of the population and sustainable growth,” he added.

The International Economic Forum Quo Vadis Peru 2019 was a forum to discuss the possibility of sustainably resuming greater economic dynamism in Peru and set the agenda for 2021, the bicentennial of the Republic, on its path to becoming first-world country.

The event was inaugurated by the Vice President of Peru, Mercedez Aráoz, and was attended by Carlos Oliva, Minister of Economy and Finance; Yolanda Torriani, president of the Lima Chamber of Commerce; Alejandro Werner, director of the IMF Western Hemisphere Department; César Peñaranda, Executive Director of the IEDEP; Alberto Rodríguez, director of the World Bank for Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador and Peru; Osmel Manzano, IDB Regional Economic Advisor; María Amparo Cruz, professor and researcher at CIUP; and Jaime de Althaus, president of Lampadia.